Art Beyond Canvas

2.12.23

This study was never meant to be planned.

On 2 December 2023, I returned to the studio carrying a quiet heaviness I didn’t have language for. Just a year earlier, my mother-in-law had passed away. Grief doesn’t move in straight lines it circles back, especially when you think you’ve already made peace with it.

That day, the plywood came first.
The material grounded me before emotion could take over.

I arranged the panels slowly, noticing how each surface held a different warmth, a different resistance. Some felt calm. Others felt unsettled. I didn’t correct them or force harmony. I let them exist together uneven, layered, unresolved.

The work moved instinctively.

There was less thinking, more doing. Decisions were made without hesitation. The gestures weren’t refined; they were honest. The plywood absorbed some marks and pushed back on others, reminding me that not everything yields, and not everything needs to.

This study became a place where emotion could land without explanation.

Feelings Spill Out sits in that space between holding it together and letting go where strength isn’t loud, and composure is simply staying present. It isn’t about grief itself, but about what remains when words feel insufficient and the body remembers before the mind does.

Looking back, this piece marked a turning point in the series.

After this, the work changed. The pace shifted. The relationship with material became more physical, more decisive. Observation gave way to action. Something had been released, and there was no returning to the earlier stillness.

What followed carried more weight and more intention.

Still in motion,
Reena M

This study is part of a sixteen-chapter exploration that led to my modular pieces. Each work reflects a moment of becoming. I’ll be documenting all sixteen here you’re welcome to return as the chapters unfold.